A feminist's perspective of all the "news" occurring at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks (with occasional jaunts into the Blogsphere, particularly Vaginastan).

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

North Dakota

Ah North Dakota: there's nothing like the "benign" wingnuts in full force. Any time I want to go to the cities, or visit my Grandma, these are the lovely little billboards assaulting my eyes.

I respect freedom of speech, and I am fully aware that the price of freedom of speech is I don't get freedom from speech. But it irritates me to know end: you cannot get a pro-choice billboard up in North Dakota. Even if there was enough of a presence to have a pro-choice organization up here (which we don't) we still could not put up billboards. The entire billboard industry here in ND refuses to put them up around here: some for moral reasons, some because it's bad for business. Now, you tell me: is that free speech? It sounds like propaganda to me.

If I every win the North Dakota state lottery, I am buying every single one of those billboard companies. I am buying them and put pro-choice slogans on instead.

Or, rather, I think I'll just build women's health clinics, and staff them with decent help. I'll pay the continuingly rising costs of insurance (one of the main reasons why we only have one women's health clinic in the state is because of "protestors" that make it too dangerous to go to work) and make sure women who need it can get abortions. I don't care about changing the minds of narrow-minded morons as much as I care about people getting their needs met.

16 Comments:

I, myself support pro choice, but have you called a billboard company to ask them if they would? I think that would make for a great investigative report. Go through it like a normal transaction and then when they ask for the actual board design, give it to them and see what they say.

The "needs"? Honestly, I find it rare when a "need" for abortion is brought to my attention, for most times it was personal vice that created a "need" for an abortion.

I happen to support the right to abort, but I, as with many Americans, see it as morally wrong. It is like taking two wrongs (sexual vice and what to many amounts to murder) to make a right, and I believe that as much should be done as possible to curb abortion rates nationwide.

I'm in supposedly liberal and free California (just south of Berkeley & San Francisco, actually) and we have those very same billboards here too. We also have those fake "womens health" clinics run by the anti-choice crowd that set up shop and then badger women with anti-abortion propaganda instead of actually helping them.

So, it's not just the midwest.

peder rice seems to be thinking along the right track. But trying to curb abortion by banning it may look good on paper but in the long run will fail. Just look at El Salvador. What the religious right needs to shut up about is education. Educate the children about safe sex, not just badger them with abstinence (which has caused *more* unwanted babies/STDs/etc in every single study that's been done.)

I already posted on my rationale for abortion http://goddesscassandra.blogspot.com/2006/03/reproductive-rights.html.

Please read up and answer there. Honestly, I think you might be a lost cause: "abortion is horrible but it should be legal" versions of progressives are the first who are willing to throw women's rights under the bus when push comes to shove.

Sexuality is not a vice, and it's not immoral. What's immoral is forcing a woman to hard labor for nine monthes for committing no crime. I too would like to see abortion rates reduced, much like I would like to see the number of heart surgeries reduced: not because I see them as immoral, but because no one wants to do surgery. The best way to do this is through comprehensive sex education and readily available contraception, not morally badgerment. Even when abortion is illegal, it doesn't mean it'll stop: the well-off will go to other countries or private hospitals, the less well-off and desperate will go to back-alleys.

Why on Earth would you think it is some sort of right to kill an innocent child? You do realize of course that a fetus is a child right? If it is not a child than what is it? Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever seen an ultrasound? Have you ever held a baby? Why should we or any government have the right to take an innocent life? I am generally an easy going open minded person, but from all points of view I have tried to look at this issue I cannot agree with abortion. The only reason that is acceptable is when faced with the decision between life of the Mother or of the Child, in which case I believe the choice is the Mother's.

Anyway, on your billboard discussion, it is the right of the company to allow what they want and don't want on their billboards. The sign is their property so it is their choice, this isn't a free speech issue, period. If you won the lottery and owned all the billboards(like you mentioned) would you allow pro-life propaganda? I think not.. Anyway, I gotta go, my children need me. I wish you the best, and hope that you will allow yourself to think more "open-minded" about this issue...

No, a fetus is not a child. (That's really all of a retort I can offer because you did not put up an argument for the humanity of fetus, which I'll presume your conflating childhood with). To say that is to undermind the real labor that women do to create human life. A fetus is no more a human life than the stuff that drips on my tampons every month. A fetus is like an acorn, a human is like a tree: you need nurturing and labor to make one turn into the other. Requiring every woman who gets pregnant to labor is slavery.

To answer your rather stupid questions, no I have not been pregnant. Yes, I have seen an ultrasound. Yes, I have held a child. No, the government does not normally have the right to take a human life (see anti-war, and anti-death penatalty). By the same token, the government has no right to take away a person's autonomy.

What, precisely, is the good of free speech if people have no ability to exercise it? That's like saying you have freedom of religion if I banned all buildings of churches: I own the property right?

And you know something: fuck you and your false "wish you the best, I hope you'll have a more open mind" bullshit. I'm not going to have an "open mind" that a females contribution towards new life is trivial, and I'm not going to have an "open mind" that women shouldn't be able to have the right to their own labor and autonomy. You don't wish me the best, you wish yourself a free conscience from coming on here and spewing stupidity.

That's what free speach is. The billboard companies can put up and not put up what they want. If you want to go put up your own billboard, than have at it. Also, look at what you're saying before you post all this stuff. I find things wrong with most of your stuff.

FYI -- there are pro-choice and feminist organizations in North Dakota. Along with the Women's Clinic in Fargo that does perform abortions, Planned Parenthood recently opened an office here (downtown Fargo), the North Dakota Women's Network (based in Bismarck) lobbied against the recent abortion bill, and the Women's Network of the Red River Valley is pro-choice and actively calls itself a feminist organization. College campusus have pro-choice factions. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You're not alone in North Dakota. We don't have the political power here yet, but we do, in fact, have many supporters...

Links to this post:

About Me

I am a white, middle class eldest child from a family of 5 (two little sisters, mom and dad biological and never divorced). I am liberal, agnostic (Atheistic toward the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish god) feminist stuck in the heart of a red state while I'm busy learning how to soar.